Hiroshima Morning
At eight, husbands dash to office jobs
without kissing their wives; women hail
taxis on streets the morning traffic clogs;
storefronts lift their shades. No one can tell
bombers drone above this city—hidden
to the naked gaze. But soon a flash
of terrible light will turn their children—
singing of the emperor—to flakes of ash,
will leave the buildings skeletons of steel.
Later, those who live will recognize
its bloom and aftermath, the skin peeled
by burning, whenever they shut their eyes.
They will still see the shadows where
old men stared as death scorched the air.
Oppenheimer After the Trinity Test
We all stared, as death scorched the air,
bracing in silence. Its blast roared for miles
and ate the cacti whole, its white sun’s flare
swallowed the horizon. I heard the howl
of a coyote before the drizzled ruin
and dust, but all the desert noises died
once the gadget sparked. Later that morning
we photographed the deep crater it made,
a charred wound on the earth. Grains of sand
had melted to glass shards. I recited
the Sanskrit verse about a thousand suns
to myself as our plane circled the site.
My thoughts never wandered from the bomb,
that harsh flash in a waking city’s fog.
Florida
A shriveled cook sways above the grill
as hamburgers soak up the smoke.
My hundred-year-old waitress watches
a tropical depression hose my car,
then jots down something on a napkin.
I read Elizabeth red-stitched on her shirt
when she returns to top off my tea.
A light bulb swinging above me burns
in the black Formica. I glance
toward the unhappy couple across the bar,
at the woman’s red dress while they eat.
Tonight Vacancy blinks at the Thunderbird
Motel a mile from here. I’ll steal the man’s
spinning stool when he disappears to piss.
My waitress winks as she pours
more in my glass. The jukebox switches on.
The egg on my plate is a runny sun
I poke with my fork. “It won't ever end,”
Elizabeth says, as we look at palms
bending along the rain-slicked road.
First Eying Death
At the yellow edge of dusk
where the barnyard ends, you find
a fox curled in the ragged grass,
and as a few crows vanish, step close.
You pick her up, study the body
in your arms— rust-colored fur
sunburned warm. Your shadows dissolve
into one shadow. Around you trees
continue their mute witness
while you shovel out a hole,
leave the fox slumping
in the dark spoon of a grave.
Blowing Smoke
That jukebox in Turner's poolroom played
those same shitty country songs
all summer. And I tried to fake the art
of blowing smoke around those 8-ball sharks,
a cigarette glued to my lip. At sixteen
I was tired of Marion, where a boy needed
holy forgiveness if he dreamed of bikinied breasts
or cussed. Meg, my girlfriend then, paralleled
the universe to pool, its nebulae to sublime
chalk dust. But I doubted that His cosmic
cue could've sent the planets whirling into
the black pockets of the galaxy. Neon
on the wall flickered and buzzed. We’d stay
Saturdays til close, the wages of our sins clear
when we woke the next morning.
She’d skim the Bible while I yawned.
After a Late Meal
Sometimes you step onto the midnight lawn
alone, and squint up at blonde moths
drunk off the glare of street lamps,
as if they're flickering stars. You swat
mosquitoes pining at your ears.
When you were a kid, in the black, wet
weeds of some pasture, you prayed
to never die. But here a traffic signal throbs
its bead of red. A mosquito dives
for your arm and bites. Night's
thick grass hisses in your bones.
© 2003.University of South Carolina.